The Integrators

Change starts with you. Maybe in your sock drawer

In the category of solutions being no less important for being mundane: Teko Socks works hard to ensure that just about every aspect of the socks it makes, and its business itself, is low in environmental impact. "Maybe I'm a little compulsive, but we really try to look at everything we do," says Jim Heiden, the company's founder and CEO. Depending on the style, Tekos are made from organic cotton, wool from a family farm in Tasmania that uses sustainable practices, or recycled polyester made from old soda bottles and industrial waste. All Teko dyes are certified environmentally safe, all the electricity used in the company's headquarters and factory in Boulder, Colorado, is offset through the purchase of wind credits, and all the company's minimal packaging is done on recycled chipboard. When the company goes to trade shows, its display is made of recycled sawdust. There's more, but you get the point.

Good karma, good socks. An endurance runner named Sean Burch recently wore Tekos to set a record (five hours, 28 minutes) for a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Where high style and high expectations meet

Furniture making is another one of those sausage businesses: You don't really want to know what goes into the product. But perhaps you should. Manufacturing furniture is typically wasteful and toxic, involving the use of virgin wood and harsh stains and adhesives. Josh Dorfman, founder of Vivavi, a retailer of environmentally responsible furniture based in Brooklyn, New York, is helping to clean up the industry.

Vivavi showcases a network of designers from across the country, all of whom create stylish furniture from sustainable resources. The pieces range from sharp and modern to warm and earthy, but there does seem to be a certain shared consciousness among Vivavi's designers. "A designer's job is to solve challenges," says Todd Laby, whose Rhubarb Décor designs are sold at Vivavi. Those challenges range from finding manufacturers willing to work with new materials like bamboo to calculating the ultimate impact of their creations. "It's important to me to use green materials because I am putting stuff into the world and wherever it ends up, I'm sort of responsible," Laby says.

Beyond being an arbiter of taste, Vivavi is something of an educator and community builder. More than 30 design companies are featured on the company's website--some obscure, some more well known. Customers browsing Vivavi are exposed to new companies, each with its own slant on how to design with the environment in mind. In addition, the website contains directories for green-focused architects, contractors, and interior designers and has links to ecofriendly apartment complexes around the U.S. and Canada. Unfurnished ecofriendly apartment complexes, to be exact. "Someone looking for a green home will eventually be looking for some furniture to put in it," Dorfman says.

It's a good sign when someone brags about being your customer

Phil Nail can't count the number of calls he's taken from customers asking if Affordable Internet Services Online, the Web-hosting business he owns with his wife, really runs entirely on solar power. Now he has proof: a real-time Web camera trained on the 120 solar panels that flank his 2,000-square-foot data center in the southern California desert town of Romoland. "Anybody can buy ecocredits," he says, referring to companies that buy alternative energy credits in exchange for the amount of electricity they consume. "We're out to make a difference."